An Earlier Alumni Organization

I was struck by the claim that “Princeton was the first college in the country to have an alumni organization.” Williams College, my alma mater, recently celebrated the bicentennial of its Society of Alumni, established when the college’s president along with many faculty and students decamped to central Massachusetts to found Amherst College in 1821, five years before Princeton’s own alumni association. Perhaps there’s a distinction to be drawn between a “society of alumni” and “alumni association.” Semantics aside, it shouldn’t be surprising that these two schools, which boast two of the oldest alumni organizations in the country, also enjoy some of the highest rates of giving from their loyal alumni!

Editor’s note: The story has been updated to read, “Princeton was among the first colleges in the country to have an alumni organization.”